Red Hook Star-Revue, August 2023

A history of the Egg Cream, page 13

From the NY Times, June 22 , 1919

The man who built a device to land planes on top of his Columbia Street Factory

by Joe Enright

Just north of Defonte’s Columbia Street sandwich mecca there stands a three story brick apartment house, 12 Luquer Street, built in 1885. There I spotted an early form of contractors advertising their work, but instead of an ugly temporary placard stuck in the front yard, they embedded a very small iron plaque in the front wall at eye level:

M. Gibbons & Son, Builders, 318 Columbia St Bkln

Tasteful, but proud, the mark of an enterprise that seemed confident they would be around for a good long while. And they were, from 1869 to 1930. Sadly, their office address and everything near it disappeared dur-

Red Hook softball league finishing 2nd season on new Red Hook turf

by Brian Abate

The Red Hook Locals Softball League is back for the second season in a row after a long hiatus waiting for the ball fields to undergo lead remediation and hurrican proofing.

The Wobblies, Bait & Tackle, the Record Shop, and B61 have all returned, and Hometown has joined as an expansion team. Greg “Greggles” Fischer, who plays for Bait & Tackle spoke about the season with us.

“B61 had a team a while back, but as the situation with the parks turned into construction forever, Bait & Tackle, and the Wobblies would just play each other in a pickup game,” Fischer said. “I’m pretty sure there’s been a league since around the mid2000s but I don’t know the exact year since that was before I was playing.”

ing the creation of the Battery Tunnel Plaza in the late 1940s, now occupied by the expansive Triborough Bridge & Tunnel Authority building.

Their extensive workshops that occupied most of the block across from their office are now a parking lot for the TBTA. Ah, but one hundred years ago, that block was much in the news.

In fact, in every newspaper. Because it was going to be the site of the first rooftop landing strip for airplanes.

The Gibbons were one of the largest employers in Red Hook as the 20th century dawned. 300 to 500 laborers and craftsmen worked for the company at any given time between its

(continued on page 10)

According to Fisher The Record Shop is in first place at 9-2, B61 is in second at 7-4, the Wobblies are in third at 6-5, and Hometown is still looking for their first win. The Wobblies beat Bait & Tackle in an important battle for third place on July 27. The regular season consists of 12 games. The playoffs are quickly approaching. This year the plan is to have a play-in game between the fourth and fifth place teams. The date for that matchup has not yet been decided. All of the playoff games will take place on Field 9 (this is one of the four fields between the Rec Center and Amazon) with the semifinals on August 10, and the championship

on August 17.

“I think it’s important to mention that we also came up with a new name for Field 9,” Fischer said. “We call it ‘Dovey Diamond.’ The field is named after a former Red Hook resident and proponent of the softball league named Gary Dovey who passed away.”

Fischer also explained the process for getting a ballfield permit, saying “We apply for the summer permit in January. ‘Dovey Diamond’ is technically considered a baseball field and there aren’t too many baseball fields left in the city so there are a lot of high school games played there. Getting

(continued on page 10)

The excited Bait and Tackle bench at their game against the Wobblies, June 27. (photo by Fiala)

481 Van Brunt Street, 8A

Brooklyn, NY 11231

(718) 624-5568

www.star-revue.com

george@redhookstar.com

Editor & PublishEr

George Fiala

NEws Nathan Weiser

Brian Abate

Katherine Rivard

FEaturEs Erin DeGregorio

CulturE Roderick Thomas

ovErsEas maN Dario Muccilli

iNsights Joe Enright

musiC Kurt Gottschalk

Jazz George Grella

Film Dante A. Ciampaglia

books Michael Quinn

CartooNs Marc Jackson

Sophie Furman

wEbmastEr Tariq Manon

kids Editor Marie Hueston

dEsigN George Fiala

ad salEs Liz Galvin

Merry Band of Contributors

Matt Graber

Howard Graubard

Nino Pantano

Kelsey Sobel

POLITICS: Should we take ranked choice to the next level?

New York City’s experiment in ranked choice voting applies to all municipal offices, but only in Party primaries, and in special elections, which are non-partisan. It does not apply to the main event; general election are still “first past the post.”

Yes, you can argue that, in NYC, Democratic primary elections are, in fact, the main event.

But, they are a main event with a closed guest list.

Virtually all the arguments in favor of rank choice voting apply just as much to general elections as they do to primaries.

Voters should be able to enthusiastically support the candidate they actually prefer, without worrying that their vote will be wasted, and that the waste of such a vote will help to elect someone they would not prefer.

by Howard Graubard

votes, they might even win in the end. Ranked choice general elections could elect candidates outside of the major parties, something which might

ries might find themselves outnumbered by moderate voters from each party, and from neither party, who suddenly could form coalitions across traditional Party lines (assuming that moderate Republicans still exist in sufficient quantities). In some districts, the Green Party might win, but in others, the sharp edges of ideology might fall victim to candidates who taste more like vanilla.

In most places, ranked choice would expand the playing field.

Of course, as Heisenberg might opine, in some cases it could result in the opposite effect.

In 2006, a local white Council Member named David Yassky ran a credible race for Congress in a black majority Brooklyn district, likely hoping for a minority victory by virtue of a divided Black vote; under ranked-choice, a similarly calculated decision probably wouldn't have any chance.

FOR EDITORIAL, ADVERTISING OR EMPLOYMENT INQUIRIES, email gbrook@pipeline.com

By allowing someone’s vote to be passed to their next preferred alternative, sometimes multiple times, ranked choice helps communities get their consensus choice, rather than facing the too frequent phenomenon of a candidate who does not reflect the community being elected because their opposition fragmented.

Founded June 2010 by George Fiala and Frank Galeano

In a ranked choice race, the Naders and the Steins of the world will get their probably much larger true votes, without facilitating the election of the Bushes and the Trumps. Maybe sometimes, having received their true

broaden the ideological range of our government.

Ranked choice general elections might not only benefit the right and and left, but the center.

For example, instead of someone like Tiffany Caban nearly winning a district attorney race with a little over a third of the votes, a more likely results would be her losing by about 20 points in the last round.

In an all-party ranked choice system, the ideological activists who often have magnified influence in prima-

Anyway, one must ask, if ranked choice is so great, why not extend it to everyone?

Now, I’ve long been an opponent of open primaries, feeling that as long as we have “first past the post” general elections, each party should get to put the choice of its membership before the voters. Closed primaries also prevent Party raiding designed to see that the other Party selects its weakest candidate.

I’ve also opposed non-partisan “first (continued on page 6)

"Probably impressive only to political trivia nuts is the group’s Chair, former Bay Ridge Councilman Sal Albanese, who last won office in 1997, and has since become the Harold Stassen of NYC politics."

Even though this is a Red Hook-based paper, I've been writing about Gowanus goings-on since the paper's founding in 2010, and have been aware of it since quite before.

In the 1980's a friend of mine bought a building on Fifth Avenue, near the Old Stone House. At the time I was living in Boerum Hill without a car. One night I decided to walk over to pay a visit. My biggest memory is the tremendous fear I felt had crossing Fourth Avenue. Not because of traffic, but I had a distinct sense that muggers or worse were lurking in the darkness.

I don't remember knowing much about Gowanus. In my mind, you went from Boerum Hill to Park Slope. The in-between place was where blue collar people worked during the day. Once I asked Buddy Scotto, the great Carroll Gardens community leader, if there was much of a Gowanus neighborhood when he was growing up (which would have been the 1930's).

Probably Buddy's greatest claim to fame was getting rid of the stench from the Gowanus Canal that used to permeate Carroll Gardens whenever the wind was blowing a certain way. He did that by going to Washington DC during the brief period when Nelson Rockefeller was Vice President and securing $453 million to rebuild the Gowanus flushing tunnel. The smell, which we will get to again shortly, came from the still canal waters that collected raw sewage whenever it rained. The flushing tunnel kept the canal waters moving, eventually sending the sewage (whatever didn't sink to the bottom), out to sea, preventing smells and worse.

The Gowanus Shitshow

by George Fiala

A lot of people thought that Buddy, who was active in the community past age 90, might have lost his faculties since all he talked about was the bright future of Gowanus, as long as the right things were done. But as his friend, I got to ask him plenty of other things, for which he gave me very wise answers. As far as Gowanus being a community in the 1930's, he kind of had the same opinion I had fifty years later.

Now it's almost fifty years after that, and real estate developers, after having exhausted downtown Brooklyn for development profits, are beginning to feast on Gowanus.

Real estate developers think far in the future (which is why I'm scared to lose Red Hook to skyscrapers some day), and Gowanus has been in their sights for at least 25 years. They were ready to go in 2008, but the Superfund designation, which was fought mightily by the Bloomberg administration, delayed things.

Brad Lander, who was watching all of this while figuring out his political future from his perches at the Fifth Avenue Committee and the Pratt Institute, became the Gowanus City Councilman in 2008, and spent the next 12 years as Gowanus' representative in government.

In that job he had the most important role that anyway could have in the future of Gowanus. Zoned as an industrial area with small pockets of residential blocks, Gowanus was prevented from becoming a wealthy high-rise area, while the bordering communities of Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens and Park Slope were becoming more and more ritzy.

MARC JACKSON

Such a situation couldn't last, and while the Superfund set things back a bit, the real estaters never gave up, as they saw there time coming.

There had been failed attempts at rezoning Gowanus in the past, but by 2012 things were getting in place and wild real estate speculation began, as developers paid millions for complete blocks so they could pull the trigger on building huge skyscrapers as soon as a rezoning became law. Remember, rezoning mostly benefits landowners as land that is worth one price is magically worth ten times that as allowable building sizes increases maybe eight times. At the beginning of the rezoning discussions, they were going for 12 stories, by the end it became 30.

The one person in all of New York City that had just about the final say in how Gowanus would be rezoned, if even at all, is the local City Councilman. That's due to a tradition called "member deference." The complete Council votes on a rezone, but custom is to follow the will of the local councilman. Conservative and pro-development groups are trying to change this, but as of now it's still mostly followed.

Now, in the case of Gowanus it was Brad Lander with that power. What he said would go. And yet, in 2013 he, together with another former employer, Pratt Institute. created a community process they called Bridging Gowanus. I went to the first meeting at PS 32 where over and over he said that since a rezoning was inevitable, this was a way to see that the "community" got something."

It was only inevitable because he called all the shots.

The beneficiaries of the rezoning and of Bridging Gowanus were Brad Lander, who has gone on to become the city Comptroller, and hopefully for him a stepping stone to higher office, and the real estate community who are transforming the community as you can see for yourself as the skyline changes.

Long term residents will lose the charm that brought them to Gowanus in the first place, and many warn of the dangers of building in an environmentally compromised area, not to mention a flood-prone area with compromised sewers.

Money and power won and Gowanus is now a giant construction project.

The smell is back!

Last month brought lots of hot weather and some rainstorms, and all of a sudden the neighborhood blogs were full of complaints about thousands of tiny dead fish in the Canal along with a stench that was reminiscent of the old days.

At the Gowanus CAG meeting (the community group associated with the Superfund), it was stated that this was due to very low oxygen levels in the water. The one person at the EPA who really cared about all this, Christos Tsiamis, was recently suddenly retired, and his replacements had no solutions.

But Marlene Donnelly, a longtime activist and CAG member, told us with some credibility that concrete runoff from the construction by the Canal has compromised all the hard work Christos has done to bring us a clean canal, supportive of birds and fish. I'm sure worse is yet to come.

Cartoon

The perils of low income housing

On July 25, a crowd of about 25 people gathered outside 63 Tiffany Place, where residents are fighting to avoid being evicted from their homes.

The 70-unit building is one of the few in Cobble Hill that provides affordable housing, but the building’s Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) regulatory agreement expires on December 31, 2023. This means there is no guarantee that the building will continue to have affordable housing beyond that date. What happens afterward is up to landlord Irving Langer. Langer took over as the building’s landlord in 2010. Cases of deferred maintenance, displacement of tenants, and deregulation of affordable housing resulted in his name appearing on the Public Advocate’s Worst Landlord Watchlist.

In 2016, a story in the New York Post said of Langer, “A city landlord who lives in a $3 million Long Island mansion pays his building supers and porters as little as $3.45 an hour while housing them in rat-infested hovels, a new lawsuit charges.”

Folks chanted “Fight, Fight, Fight! Housing is a Human Right!,” and then residents at 63 Tiffany Place, and local politicians spoke to the crowd.

“This is an atrocity,” said John Leyva, who has lived in the building for 29 years. “This is a story about how low-income families are being evict-

SHORT SHORTS:

BY STAR-REVUE STAFF

Bed Stuy landmark saved

Brooklyn's Borough President pledged $20,000 toward saving the Magnolia Tree Earth Center. Founded in 1972 by “the tree lady” of Brooklyn, Hattie Carthan, the Center promotes environmental education and advocacy. The tree and the brownstones behind it achieved landmark designation in 1970 after Hattie Carthan learned that the brownstones that kept the Magnolia warm, out of the wind, and therefore alive, would be razed to make room for a parking lot and new apartments. By 1976, the plans to redevelop the block had changed and Carthan was able to negotiate the purchase of the Lafayette Avenue brownstones, where she then opened the Center.

“The Magnolia Tree Earth Center is a historical anchor and neighborhood centerpiece,” said Council Member Chi Ossé. “It is also a critical hub for environmental and social action. Its preservation and rehabilitation are a critical mission for this office and for the broader borough.”

You could be in Cinderella

The Brooklyn Heights Players, a 68 year-old community theater group,

by Brian Abate

ed from their homes after 30 years just so this man can make a few extra million. Because of his vast wealth already, this isn’t life-changing money but it will make 70 families homeless.

I understand people want to get their money but Mr. Langer can still do the right thing and make an incredible return on his investment while we live happily ever after.

“We have people of every race and ethnicity. Many are retired but many are still working. Many of us have disabilities and health issues. We have civil service employees, and quite a few hospital workers. We have a singer, a teacher, a part-time actor, a chef, a classical artist, a veterinary assistant, a union labor organizer, and a military veteran. We have someone who had a kidney transplant earlier this year, and someone else battling multiple sclerosis. One neighbor just had a stroke and is learning how to walk again. We’re people, and this is our home. For them to try to force us out just isn’t right.”

Joy Foster, another long-time resident said, “ We are not just dollar signs, we are humans, and this is our home. We’ve been here for up to 30 years, and we are an essential part of this community. We are nothing but pawns with dollar signs to Irving Langer, and if you remove us, who will be next, because it’s just going to keep going.”

After speaking, residents from 63 Tif-

will be holding auditions for their first play of the new season, Rodger & Hammerstein's Cinderella.

The auditions will be at their theater, at 26 Willow Place on August 7th and 8th from 7 pm to 10 pm

Sign ups begin at 6:30 for auditions.  They ask for a headshot and resume and request that you prepare 32 bars of a musical theater song that best fits and showcases your range. An accompanist will be provided. Please bring clearly marked sheet music in the correct key and do not sing a capella. Dance auditions will be held at callbacks. All roles are open to actors of all ages, gender identities, race.

She couldn't vote for it!

This is from local Council Member Alexa Avilas' monthly newsletter.

"Since we last spoke, the NYC Fiscal Year budget 2024 passed. In this $107 billion budget. I along with 10 other progressives voted no on this Mayor’s austerity budget that guts services and calls it a “win”.

At a time when New Yorkers are facing inflation, out of control costs, and the worst affordability crisis in decades, the Mayor has recklessly cut programs and services. This budget continued to cut the agencies that many of our residents depend on for food, housing, and other support services. Parks like the one on Verona Street between Richard and Dwight, the park between 55th and 56th on 2nd Avenue,

fany Place presented Ben Fuller-Googins of the Carroll Gardens Association with an award for fighting for the residents in the building and helping the community.

“We don’t know how to organize and put things together like this so without him, this wouldn’t have been possible,” said Leyva. “He has taught us so much and he has been an amazing resource.”

Many local politicians were also in attendance and spoke at the event, including Comptroller Brad Lander, State Senator Andrew Gounardes, Council Member Shahana Hanif, and Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon.

“Despite years of outreach, the landlord, the city, and the state have failed to come together to ensure a new regulatory agreement is made to keep these working-class residents in their homes,” said Hanif. “I’m here to stand in solidarity with these tenants and demand a solution. We cannot allow this shining example of affordable housing to become another luxury condominium at the expense of our long-term neighbors.”

Simon also made the point that Cob-

and the park on 3rd avenue between 64th and 65th Streets did not receive funding needed for repairs. NYCHA remains under-resourced, the Miccio Center elevator remains in disrepair, and human service workers and other essential service workers did receive full equitable pay despite my urging for additional funding. These are but some of the needs of our district, our home."

The Star-Revue wins national awards!

The National Newspaper Association is a Pensacola, FL based non-profit newspaper trade association founded in 1885. The organization has over 2,300 members, making it the largest newspaper trade association in the United States. The Star-Revue became one of those members a couple of years ago, and this year entered their newspaper award contest.

We won twice!

The first was an honorable mention for "Best Non Profile Feature Story."

This was something we won an award for in the NY State Press Association's contest earlier this year, also an honorable mention. It was Erin DeGregorio's story " New Votive Ship Sails Aloft in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church." Here's what the judge said: A fascinating piece of history with which very few people are familiar.

The next award was a second place in the category "Best Localized Na-

ble Hill has become one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city and if residents are forced out of 63 Tiffany Place, it would be very difficult for them to find another home in the neighborhood.

“This is a battle for the soul of New York City and now is the time for folks to show what side they’re on,” Lander said. “On one side are people like Joy, and John and this whole Tenant’s Association; people who have made this place a community. The question is will this place be there for them and for their kids or will we allow greed to literally evict them into the street?” Right now the answer to that question remains unknown.

tional Story." This was a series that George Fiala and Brian Abate teamed up on starting with the March 2022 issue. Over five months we tried to illustrate the importance of Ukrainians in our city as their country was being threatened (and still is) by their larger neighbor.

The judge said this: What a great idea to help readers see all the Ukrainian people, places and things right there in their neighborhoods. The photos and packaging are well-done.

The awards will be given out at the NNA fall convention, held at the end of September in Washington. The Star-Revue will be there and report!

Night out in Coffey Park

For about the millionth year in a row, on August 1, Night Out Against Crime was held in parks throughout the city. Politicians endure extraordinary logistical efforts to show up at each one in their district.

The pandemic might have given them a few years off, but now it's back! Our Alexa made it to Red Hook (below)!

Jo Anne Simon speaking at the rally. (photo by Brian Abate)

POLITICS

past the post” elections, where, it is possible that a divided field with multiple candidates from the area’s majority Party could divide their votes, electing someone from a Party not representative of the area’s majority consensus, like when Republican Andrew Eristoff won a special Council election against six Democrats with only 28% of the vote.

Consensus is the goal

But I do not necessarily oppose allparty “jungle primaries,” or other system which allow all candidates from all parties, and no parties, to run together, if those systems provide a method to make sure the final choice reflects the area’s consensus, rather than the first one to mange to cross the finish line with a small minority of the vote.

This is, after all, an election, not a track meet. Elections should allow constituencies to select a candidate who reflects their views and interests; systems should not be set up which facilitate the opposite result.

The problem is that some of these systems do that better than others. A few years ago, California, which has all-party “jungle primaries.” had a Congressional primary in a Democratic-leaning seat where two strong Republican competed against a large gaggle of Dems, resulting in the two GOPers having a narrow lead, and voters then had to chose between them in a runoff where the majority of voters were unable to elect a member of the House reflecting their choice of which Party was to lead that Congress.

There are better ways than runoffs of insuring that representatives are representative; most of them involve some form of ranked choice voting, of which there are several variations.

The variation cautiously and slowly rearing its head in NYC these days is called “Final Five,” which is a modified version of the Alaska system which in 2022 allowed the same electorate to elect a moderate Republican for the Senate at the same time it elected a moderate Democrat to the House, finally burying the zombie apocalypse we call Sarah Palin once and for all. Almost sounds a bit tempting.

The team behind Final Five includes progressives, liberals, conservatives, moderates and those who haven’t a clue what they are (e.g., Andrew Yang), Democrats (from left/liberal to DINO).

It includes Republicans, Libertarians, the politically gender non-conforming (e.g., Ari Kagan) and those who seem to want to destroy Parties as we know them (e.g., Andrew Yang).

Brownstoners may be impressed by the presence of one of our own Members of the Assembly Bobby Carroll, contributing a wonky, good-government oriented endorsement.

Probably impressive only to political trivia nuts is the group’s Chair, former Bay Ridge Councilman Sal Albanese, who last won office in 1997, and has since become the Harold Stassen of NYC politics, losing elections both primary and general elections for Mayor and last seen getting creamed in a race for City Council on Staten Island (when he’s not busy leading some group of Democrats endorsing some Republican candidate).

They are promising one day to circu-

late a petition to put Final Five on the ballot so that it can be enacted as part of the City Charter.

But while, outside of Carroll, most of Final Five’s supporters are hard to take seriously, the same cannot be said of their proposal, which, with some caveats, is not without some real appeal. Still, there is no word when they will circulate such a petition; rumors are that the money to run a petition operation and a subsequent campaign are coming slowly, if at all, as Sal and Company try to drum up support with email blasts and by appearances at local political clubs and civic groups. So, we may be voting on this one day, but probably in no time soon.

So what exactly is Final Five?

In “Final Five” there is a non-partisan primary where every voter is allowed to cast a single vote, and then the top five candidates come back in November to compete in a ranked choice race. Why not save the taxpayers a lot of money, and just do one ranked choice race from the get go?

Final Fivers feel that too many candidates, a likely result of the system they created, can result in voter confusion, so the first round would be a sorting mechanism and then voters could make an informed choice among five options which, for some reason, they’ve determined is the sweet spot between too meager a menu and one too abundant (In Alaska, the sweet spot was determined to be four, but I guess there are more of us than there are of them, so whatever).

But hey, why not reflect voter opinion even more accurately by using ranked choice in both rounds? In the first

round, we could just stop eliminating choices until we’d sorted it down to the “Final Five,” or whatever number tastes the sweetest. Less chance then of voters dropping a candidate they prefer for strategic reasons. Anyway, I had some qualms about the ranked choice system we currently have. Why restrict voters to five choices? The last time we used such a system (School Board Elections), we allowed voters unlimited choices, resulting in fewer exhausted ballots. But, ultimately it was clear that we’d probably get only one chance at getting ranked choice, and there was no point making the perfect the enemy of the good. So, I voted yes and urged folks to support the imperfect plan. So, while I’d like to tinker with the toy Sal and Company have put on display, ultimately my position is “Compared to What?” and on that basis, I kinda like Final Five, though I think it might benefit from some more appealing public faces.

The last mayoral election was ranked choice.

Third Avenue holds the key to a well integrated Sunset Park community

Sunset Park has a history of things happening to it, rather than for it. In Thomas J. Campanella’s thorough history of the borough, “Brooklyn: The Once and Future City”, Campanella describes how the borough’s neighborhoods were transformed by Robert Moses-era construction projects.

Working class neighborhoods were re-branded with names like Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill. In Sunset Park, Third Avenue was widened to ten lanes of traffic to support the waterfront’s still lively industry, and “within a decade, not only Third Avenue—once home to seven movie theaters, scores of shops, stores, restaurants and cafes—but much of Sunset Park would be spiraling toward abandonment and blight.”

Today, in spite of the literal shadow from Third Avenue, Sunset Park shines as one of the walkable neighborhoods that makes New York City so special.

Sunset Park is bounded in the north by Park Slope South and in the south by Bay Ridge; from its inland boundary around Ninth Avenue, the whole neighborhood slowly slopes down towards the waterfront. The avenues are clustered with small restaurants and stores—among them Fifth Avenue with its array of Latinx delights, and Eighth Avenue with Brooklyn’s bustling Chinatown. The lively commercial avenues are separated by the steep streets, which are filled mostly with row houses.

Sunset Park is named after its beautiful park, with incredible views of the city, but its active streetscapes are what set it apart. According to the

by Katherine Rivard

NYU Furman Center, “an estimated 134,945 people live in Sunset Park, of which 26.7% identified as Asian, 3.8%

fic plummeted. In Sunset Park though, residents stayed in the neighborhood, frequenting their local businesses even more often. “Old school, walk to shop, mom & pop, pick your cliche,” Estrada finds endless ways to describe the neighborhood, finally settling on— “Sunset Park is the kind of place New Yorkers go when they feel homesick.”

Transportation (DOT) is finally look-

identified as Black, 37.7% identified as Hispanic, and 27.5% identified as white.”

This diversity is what provides the neighborhood with a rich array of businesses. Its food scene, in particular, is beginning to receive more attention as outsiders pick up on its affordable and flavorful banh mi, juicy Hainan chicken, and giant tortas.

David Estrada knows the neighborhood better than most. He has led the Sunset Park Business Improvement District (Sunset Park BID) since 2018, and before that he served as the Chief of Staff for former council member, Carlos Menchaca.

Estrada easily recognizes the beauty and strengths of his neighborhood. “It’s like an old growth forest,” he explains. The mixed use nature of the avenues, with small storefronts on the first floor and apartments above, ensure steady foot traffic. The small size of each storefront means that smaller businesses can start more easily, creating a retail diversity that results in a more self-sufficient neighborhood. One can find dinner, a drugstore, an electronics shop, and a tailor all within a few blocks.

During the pandemic, commuting paused and many business districts suffered as foot traf-

While central Sunset Park’s streets are thriving, the waterfront has struggled due to the decline of manufacturing and industrial activities post-WWII. Recognizing this and hoping to spur investment, the New York City Economic Development Corporation created a Waterfront Vision Plan for the neighborhood in 2009. Its recommendations were meant to maximize the efficient movement of goods, protect and grow industrial employment, promote green practices, and balance neighborhood needs. In the 2010s, $450 million was spent to redevelop the area.

Today, Industry City consists of 35 acres of curated stores and restaurants, just a stone’s throw away from the working class, immigrant community of Sunset Park.

But while Industry City was the outcome of a new vision for Sunset Park’s waterfront, the redevelopment has left most of the neighborhood unchanged. In fact, when the NYC Department of Small Business Services conducted a needs assessment for the Sunset Park BID in 2022, one of the challenges for the neighborhood was a “lack of cultural anchors, such as theaters, museums, galleries, and community centers, leaving the community without central gathering spaces and masks the rich cultural activity of Sunset Park.” This lack of shared resources between the existing Sunset Park community and Industry City may partially be explained by the physical divide—Third Avenue.

Third Avenue is essentially a widened service road for the Gowanus Expressway that runs above. Pedestrians on the street are accosted by the hum of engines and the smell of exhaust fumes from the six lanes of traffic. Crossing the street is, at its best, time-consuming, and at its worst, fatal. Thirteen people have been killed on Third Avenue since 2016. Now though, the NYC Department of

ing at the street and seeking community input on how to improve it. On July 20, DOT held a virtual Third Avenue Visioning Workshop to receive community input (DOT held two in person workshops on the same topic in April). Only a dozen or so residents logged on for the meeting, which began with a review of the existing area, ongoing improvement projects (the Brooklyn Greenway will extend a bike lane on Third Avenue as far as 29th Street, before continuing on 1st and 2nd Ave), and the toolbox of interventions that the agency uses to improve street design.

Attendees were then broken into groups to provide their feedback and suggestions on how Third Avenue can be improved. Feedback included the need for protected bike lanes, improved sidewalks and crosswalks so that pedestrians can cross the street safely, and improved rainwater drainage. Those who were unable to attend the meeting may still provide feedback via an online survey ( https://www.surveymonkey.com/ r/3rdAvePortalFeedback).

DOT has the chance to work alongside the community to make Third Avenue safer for visitors and residents alike. By using community input and expertise to improve Third Avenue, DOT can better connect Sunset Park to the economic opportunities at Industry City, provide the businesses along it with increased foot traffic, and most importantly, prevent additional deaths and injuries. Whether these important changes happen or not, history has shown that despite outside forces periodically proposing or imposing redevelopments and changes to the neighborhood, life carries on in Sunset Park.

"By using community input and expertise to improve Third Avenue, DOT can better connect Sunset Park to the economic opportunities at Industry City."

Some of the fruits available on Fifth Avenue and 41st Street. (photo by Fiala)

#1 Top College Prep Private High School In Brooklyn

Through required Advanced Placement® coursework in all disciplines, unprecedented exposure to high-level content, and critical thinking opportunities typically reserved for university-level studies, our students are prepared to be leaders in college and beyond.

COLUMBIA STREET

(continued from page 1)

Civil War era founding and its dissolution as the Great Depression began. In addition to residential buildings in South Brooklyn, they erected a Bush Terminal warehouse, City schools, the Pioneer movie theater on Richards Street across from Coffey Park (now a medical building), most of the structures in the old Todd Shipyards, as well as many projects big and small ranging from midtown Manhattan to Far Rockaway.

The business was created by an Irish immigrant, Michael Gibbons. When he got sick in 1894 and died two years later at the age of 60, his son Richard took the reins, inheriting a half a million dollars of construction contracts to manage. Richard Gibbons was a visionary, an innovator and very generous, especially with other people’s money. Since Excel spreadsheets wouldn’t be invented for eighty years, he failed to factor in the delay between accounts receivable and payable. So to buy the supplies his company needed, he started forging checks, using the names of three elderly friends of his recently departed father, to the tune of about $150,000. He would restore their accounts immediately so his “borrowing” went undetected for years until an economic slowdown led to his ruin. Tried in Brooklyn Supreme Court and found incredibly guilty, he was sent up the Hudson to Sing Sing prison for 30 months. There the story should have ended…

except it didn’t because I need 500 more words to get to airplanes on Red Hook rooftops. Upon his release, Richard resumed control of the “Gibbons Company” and built the business back up again. It didn’t hurt that he was a cousin of the most powerful and famous Catholic in America, James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, a fierce defender of the working man and his right to unionize. This undoubtedly helped him land jobs building rectories, many new parochial schools and even an elevator for the new Cardinal John Murphy Farley in his Madison Avenue residence across from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Both Cardinals were supporters of the World War in 1917 and the Gibbons Company won some lucrative construction contracts from the War Department. That’s when Gibbons got interested in aviation.

The Wright Brothers pioneered motorized flight in 1903, while Gibbons did his time at Sing Sing, and less than ten years later seaplanes were being lowered and retrieved from the water via cranes on large naval ships for reconnaissance flights. But it wasn’t until 1917 that the British successfully landed a wheeled aircraft on a moving warship. Perhaps Gibbons work in the Hook’s shipyards and building electric elevators got him to thinking about such things but somehow he got the idea to build a device that would create a platform for planes to launch and land on rooftops, boats and even rocky coasts.

He imagined a steel runway mounted

on a large electro-mechanical turntable that would require a clearance of 200x60 feet to operate, so he envisioned it being deployed on top of large factories and skyscrapers. But first he needed one of his company’s engineers to help him draw up the plans and get it patented. And so on August 15, 1919, the Feast of the Assumption (a Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics), less than a year after the War ended, Richard Gibbons filed an application for an “Airplane Receiving Apparatus…so as to produce sudden changes in velocity within a limited space to enable a plane to land upon a building or ship.” Gibbons went on to write that “it will be obvious that reversed movements between the apparatus and airplane would assist in starting an airplane within a limited space.” But his application does not describe that reverse process for launching a plane, noting that “the invention is therefore to be considered merely as illustrative of its principle.”

Perhaps to create buzz for his invention, Gibbons issued an elaborate press release two months before his filing. In it he boldly claimed that although he had only fabricated a model, he had just broken ground to build a five story factory measuring 175x175 feet, replacing all his shops along Columbia Street, and on that roof he would install the first Airplane Receiving (and launching) Apparatus. Included in his release was an artist’s rendering of his plan. The press ate it up.

To Be Continued

SOFTBALL

(continued from page 1)

the permit for that one was huge for us. We’re mostly at ‘Dovey Diamond’ on Thursdays but on Mondays, our permit is for Field 8 or Field 5.”

B61 defending champs

Despite the sizable gap in the standings, last season is proof that big upsets are possible in the postseason. Bait & Tackle upset the Record Shop in the semifinals after the Record Shop finished with the best record in the regular season.

B61 knocked out the Wobblies in the semifinals and then beat Bait & Tackle 29-7 to win the championship. They popped champagne to celebrate and were presented with a championship trophy. After lead contamination was found in the soil at the ballfields, some of the ballfields were closed in 2012, and more were closed in 2015. Now, many of the fields are open once again and they have turf instead of grass.

It would have been understandable for a lot of the longtime players to show some rust last year after the layoff but the games were still competitive, and everyone was happy to once again be able to play games in Red Hook.

“This whole league has been so much improved from last year,” Fischer said. “Every team is a threat. We’ve won four more games than we won at this point last year and it’s going to be very tight this year.”

Gear up, Red Hook. It’s time for playoff softball!

Slow progress on temporary library

by Brian Abate

With both the Red Hook Library and Carroll Gardens Library closed for renovations, the search is on for a temporary library location in Red Hook. Imre Kovacs, a Red Hook resident, and one of the leaders of the new Civic Association stepped up and found a possible location at Red Hook Pentecostal Holiness Church. The church is located at 110 Wolcott St., just off Van Brunt St. The church is also a possible location for a market.

“At first I thought wheelchair accessibility wouldn’t be possible here, but then it dawned on me that we could put in a ramp,” Kovacs said. “The library needs a location and we’re taking the first step toward seeing if this can work.”

Kovacs tried reaching out to librarian Joyce Kowpak to join a tour of the church but was not able to get in touch with her. Ricardo Razuri from the Record Shop, located at 360 Van Brunt St., and local artist Matias Kalwill did show up to meet Reverend Donald Gray.

There is a nice outdoor backyard with grass behind the church where people could potentially gather, especial-

The Red Hook Houses

told by Gene Bray

Continued from Last Month

That evening the elevator was spotless. Damn. I was wondering what it was gonna look like. So the elevator is cleaned every 3 days or so.

Unless the janitor is this one lazy mother….Whoops.

So yeah, if the common areas are a little trashy, deal with it punk. I’m gettin ghetto.

People think the P.Js are dangerous. I know I did. I was practicing self defense moves. But I’ve never had a problem, thank God. I don’t wanna hurt anybody. My last fight I won decisively.

Alright, it was in the 4th grade. I never hear gunshots. I never see gangs. I’ve seen 5 fights in 22 years. Three of them were girls. They go for the hair.

ly while the weather is nice this summer. While we were there, folks were working to trim the branches of a large tree. One of the key factors in determining if the space is appropriate is making sure there aren’t any safety issues with the tree. The plan is to consult with an arborist.

“The church is here to help and I’m here to help,” said Gray. “The next step is getting some details about things that would work for the library. Let’s put it together and see if it’s workable. We know we have to reach the community and we are always looking for new ideas. We want this to be a place where people from the community can have good, clean, family fun.”

The next step is for leaders from the Red Hook Civic Association to put together a one-page report.

The group discussed the importance of having the temporary location for the library be in the neighborhood.

“It’s so important for kids to have a space where they can go and research and learn once they have an idea,” Razuri said. “There are families who don’t have easy access to the internet and they have to rely on libraries. It makes a huge difference for them.”

“What would be nice about having the library here, is it puts it right in the community,” Kovacs said. “It would truly be a community library.”

Civic Association meets at the Rec Center

by Brian Abate

Despite the dog days of summer, an engaged crowd of 23 showed up for the Civic Association Meeting on July 17 at the Red Hook Recreation Center.

A vote was held on whether or not to

I paid $1300 per month when I was working. Out of $2,600 net. If someone was living with me who worked where I did, we would have paid $2,600 a month. Some couples pay $4000 a month. It’s not a bunch of people on welfare. Everybody’s workin’.

The mood is relaxed and happy.. And it’s not just The Red Hook Houses. I spent 18 years working in the projects of Brownsville, East New York, and Bed Stuy. It’s the same. Things have changed. The old days are gone. Are you a white guy? Take a stroll through the PJ lanes and loosen up your walk. It’s gonna take a while if you’re like most white guys. Nobody’s gonna bother you.

I love the basketball courts in the summer. Young guys slashing explosive moves to the hoop. Although in the last few years there are a lot more 3 point shots. Which rarely go in. But there’s still a lotta mean muggin, cussing, and power posing. You can do all of that stuff too.

Right in your living room. It’s great for building self esteem.

Sunday morning in The Projects. My favorite time. You see people dressed up for church. The senior citizens look the best. Some have on clothes that are 20, 30, maybe even 50 years old. They’re

have an August meeting, and the majority voted against it. Another vote was held regarding when the next meeting should take place and it was decided that the next meeting will be held on Wednesday, September 6.

Matias Kalwill came up with a strategy to address issues that are important to the attendees. Once a specific issue is raised, there will be a research phase, followed by compiling a one-page input sheet to “try to build consensus around the topic.” After that, there will be a report on the issue.

Progress has also been made in regard to some of the key issues that the committees are focusing on. Dave Lutz provided an update on the Services Committee and said that after a call to 311, “additional trash cans are being returned to Van Brunt St.”

Additionally, a fact sheet was put together regarding the possibility of a bus route that would go directly from Red Hook to Manhattan.

“We know this is something that’s been talked about for a long time and we’re pushing for busses from Red Hook to Manhattan,” said Emmitt Mendoza-Gaspar, chief of staff for Assembly Member Marcela Mitaynes.

The Infrastructure Committee

continues to focus on safe streets, air quality, and E-warehouses. One of the key issues they’re looking at is the cruise ships that come to Red Hook and whether or not ships like the Queen Mary are plugging in and using shore power or if they are spewing fumes into the neighborhood.

immaculate. Their Church Clothes. Never worn anywhere else. Classic. Conservative. And never out of style. Church folks are always so polite. It’s comforting.

Fellas, church is a great place to meet women. They have morals. They’re loyal and trustworthy. And from the ones I’ve known, when the sun goes down, they all had the devil in them too. Sunday mornings always lift my spirit. On Thanksgiving and Christmas the hallways smell heavenly. Now I know on those days hallways everywhere do. But in The Projects it’s just a little better. More sweet potatoes in the ovens. And you know somebody is cookin’ a ham.

A lotta people think The Projects are full of rats and roaches. I’ve been there 22 years and never saw a rat or a mouse. Roaches, yeah. But when I see roaches; they see Combat. [ if they can see that is ]

Now if you’re white and you get invited to a black party? That’s a great honor, so show some respect. If they say it starts at 9, then show on time.

Like 10:30 or 11.

The best thing I’ve learned living here….Be polite and keep it movin’. Now that I’m 68, people young and

“Regarding MSC Cruises, we’ve become used to seeing people on the cruises end up stuck in Red Hook, and we never should’ve had a ship that big here,” said Council Member Alexa Aviles.

Kristen Rouse, deputy director for Congress Member Dan Goldman also provided an update on the Red Hook Library, which is closed for renovations, saying “We’ve been communicating with New York Public Library [NYPL.] Their website now has a link for events planned in Red Hook.”

Upcoming events in August include a knitting group, improv camp for kids, story time with Crystal, teen tech support, and Spanish as a second language. Unfortunately, the Carroll Gardens Library, which is the second closest one to Red Hook, closed for renovations on July 21. The library is expected to be closed for 18-24 months. Before the meeting concluded, attendees had the opportunity to bring up new business. One of the topics raised was the return of spotted lanternflies, an invasive species that threatens agriculture here in NYC. According to the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), adult spotted lanternflies begin to appear in July.

One attendee mentioned the possibility of introducing praying mantises into the neighborhood because they eat spotted lanternflies. As of now, nothing so drastic is planned.

The next meeting is scheduled for September 6, at the Rec Center, 6 pm.

old wait an extra beat or two, patiently holding the door with a smile.

But I knew I was accepted about 2 years in. Looking out my window on a March morning, I saw royal blue skies and golden sunshine. I left out in just a sweatshirt. A black woman in the lane scolded me

“Where’s your jacket?

Then she looked around, and with a mischievous look in her eye, leaned close, and whispered

“You think you’re white?”

Volunteers trying to help the Red Hook library while library personnel do not show up. (photo by Abate)

Over 20 people showed up for the summer meeting

Nevins Street Apartments celebrates a year of changing lives by

Ayear ago, Yumedys Gonzalez was one of the more than 22,000 New Yorkers living in a shelter. And like so many, she clung to the dream of one day having her own home.

Nevins Street Apartments, which reopened in May 2022 at 50 Nevis Street in a new 10-story, $72 million downtown Brooklyn development, seemed just right.

“I would stand outside and envision one day living here,” Gonzalez said.

It didn’t take long for her to stop imagining. That spring, she moved into one of its 129 affordable units.

“I love living here because of the peace it gives me, the supportive staff, and how I can be independent,” she said.

As Nevins celebrated the one-year anniversary of its new building, Gonzalez’s experience reflects the positive impact it has had on its residents and the community.

Operated by the Institute for Community Living (ICL), Nevins Street Apartments is a permanent housing program for homeless New Yorkers and those experiencing serious mental health challenges.

ICL has run Nevins for 30 years as a licensed transitional housing facility, according to the city. When it was redeveloped, its single rooms were converted into individual apartments earmarked for those previously housed in Department of Homeless Services (DHS) shelters and Office of Mental Health (OMH)-licensed transitional living places.

Nathan Weiser

These new affordable units, coupled with the ICL’s focus on addressing residents’ physical, mental, and social needs—what it calls “whole health” — Nevins offers a unique model for tackling the city’s dual mental health and housing crises.

Central to that effort are Nevins’ 78 units of supportive housing, defined by the city as “affordable housing with supportive social services in place for individuals and families who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.”

There are 82 residents living in Nevins’ supportive housing, including individuals with mental health or substance abuse issues, veterans, young adults who have aged out of foster care, and a handful of families.

Sharon Sorrentino, ICL’s vice president for child, family, and young adult services, said that in the year since Nevins reopened, residents in its supportive housing are happier, healthier, and more independent than they were before moving in.

[Nevins is placed in a neighborhood that has a lot of opportunities for people in terms of getting out, exercising, and eating healthy foods,” Sorrentino said. “In addition to the services we provide, we are also able to link people to things in the community that will help them achieve whole health.”

Nevins’ impact is found in the data.

In the last year, 90% of supportive living residents have not required psychiatric emergency room visits or hospitalization. More than one third are connected to mental health ser-

vices, 87% are at reduced risk for substance abuse, and the number of residents seeing a primary care physician has more than doubled.

“Those are really helpful indicators that people are connected to whole health,” Sorrentino said.

Transitioning from a shelter or temporary housing to something more permanent can be challenging. To help in the adjustment, ICL offers residential treatment and support services for six to nine months to ensure individuals are acclimated and settled.

There are no psychiatrists on site, but there are counselors and case managers who can link residents with needed services. Many residents receive in-unit assistance from home health aides and care coordinators. And ICL will help with family reunification. That’s all on top of the amenities you’d expect in new-build housing: 24-hour front desk security, a computer lab, bike parking, a community room, a multi-purpose room, a laundry room, an exercise room, and tenant storage. Like many other parts of Brooklyn, downtown is in the midst of largescale change, from a reimagined branch of the Brooklyn Public Library to skyscraper-scale housing developments to a proposed $40 million overhaul of Fulton Mall. Scaffolding and construction fencing are as common as street vendors and double parking. Nevins Street is part of this overhaul. And it has been welcomed with open arms—and sometimes closed streets for block parties.

“This project represents exactly what we need more of in New York City,” Mayor Eric Adams said at the May 2022 ribbon cutting. It’s a sentiment echoed a year later by city council member Lincoln Restler, who represents downtown Brooklyn.

“This is a model for how we can ensure folks have the resources they need to get on their feet,” he said. Support for housing the previously homeless and those with mental health needs is often cause for contention. The embrace of Nevins and its residents is a happy exception — hopefully not the last — and as important for improving the lives of some of New York’s neediest as having a stable, permanent place to live. “It has been nice to have that sense of community in the area,” Sorrentino said. “‘Whole health’ encompasses everything. It is your physical and mental health care, but also how you connect to the community.”

Egg creams aren’t going extinct any time soon in Brooklyn

Aclassic American drink, the egg cream is a true culinary invention of New York City, up there with chicken and waffles, the Waldorf salad, and baked Alaska to name a few. It was also deemed “Brooklyn’s official elixir since the 1920s” by former Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz 21 years ago.

Following the end of World War II before drive-thrus and bottled sodas, an estimated 125,000 soda fountains served up smiles and sweets inside pharmacies operating on main streets across the U.S. Now, these full-service culinary destinations are few and far between, especially in the five boroughs, since fountains and ice cream parlors like Gem Spa in Manhattan’s East Village and Anopoli and Hinsch in Bay Ridge have closed. (Hinsch did reopen in 2015 as a Stewart’s Shops franchise keeping much of the decor). Some local eateries, however, have made it their mission to prevent the egg cream and the art of “making a good one” from fizzing out. Coupled with a dash of New York City spunk and determination, you could say that their recipe for success can be found in a Libbey bell glass with three ingredients: milk, seltzer, and flavored syrup.

A “Point of Pride”

A mom-and-pop staple in Greenpoint since 1954, Peter Pan Donut & Pastry Shop is known for its donuts and teal-and-pink employee uniform. But a frothy egg cream is just as popular as a hot cup of coffee, according to manager Demetri Siafakas.

“It’s truly an old-school thing that really ebbs and flows with time, but I think it’s always present in some capacity,”

by Erin DeGregorio

he said. “I would say it’s having sort of a resurgence. I feel like I make more egg creams now than I do milkshakes sometimes.”

“Every time I forget to order seltzer I’m in big trouble because I know I’m going to have five or six egg creams ordered that day at least,” he said with a laugh. Since Demetri’s parents purchased the space from its original owners in the early 1990s, the menu has not only expanded to include more donut flavors and toppings (with the original base recipe) and seasonal treats, but has kept egg creams. “I consider it a staple of the shop,” Siafakas said. “It’s a point of pride for us to make an egg cream because Peter Pan’s is supposed to be like an oldschool Brooklyn place.”

Similarly, Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Fountain in Carroll Gardens makes customers feel like they’ve stepped into another century while surrounded by tin ceilings, 100-year-old penny tile floors, and wooden cabinetry filled with ephemera dating back to 1870— all original since the space was once a thriving neighborhood pharmacy, Longo’s Drugs.

Gia Giasullo and Peter Freeman, the sibling co-founders of Brooklyn Farmacy, were introduced to the beverage as young children when Freeman’s father would often make them at home. “In 2009, one of the things we talked about was that most kids didn’t even know what an egg cream was,” Giasullo said. “We were sort of sitting on the richness of this historic culinary invention that really had been designated to the bottom of the menu that most people didn’t know how to make correctly. So,

our mission really at the start was kind of very simple: let’s bring the egg cream to the top of the menu, make a really good egg cream, and start to talk about it again.”

“And to respect the history and process,” Freeman added. “The egg cream is still here and still on the top of our menu, and we’re still happy to make them for people that grew up drinking them and to make them for people who have never tried one.”

Rumor Has It…

There are different stories out there as to where the egg cream was invented (Brooklyn or Manhattan’s Lower East Side) and why the egg cream goes by the name when the beverage contains neither eggs nor cream. Some say it’s Brooklyneese for “a cream” or a variation of the Yiddish word, “echt keem.” Others say it was a mistaken translation of “chocolat et crème,” a Parisian drink made with chocolate that was requested by actor Boris Thomashefsky in lower Manhattan. Even Freeman and the Siafakas family have their own theories.

“In the late 1800s, soda fountains on the Lower East Side were selling chocolate sodas and, on a parallel track, you had dairy products being brought into the city, probably first going to the people that paid the best, probably in the upper part of the city. So, if you think about it, by the time it got down to the Lower East Side, if at all, you’d be lucky if the milk wasn’t spoiled or warm. And then we have the chicken … eggs were easy to come by and plentiful. If you take an egg white and whip it with sugar, you get like a merengue that’s actually shelfstable at room temperature for at least

a full day. So, you take this chocolate soda, this nice little sugary egg white mix, dollop it on top, and it’s beautiful. You have a sweet egg cream,” Freeman speculated. “In people’s minds, they’re thinking cream, they’re thinking, ‘Oh, this is luxurious. This is something I want to try.’”

“I was told that egg creams are named for the eggshell shine … that the foam’s not good unless it has that [color] shine,” said Peter, Demetri’s brother who also works at Peter Pan’s.

“This is probably one of those things where there’s no answer or you’re never going to find the true answer,” Demetri commented.

It Hits the Spot

So, if you’re in the mood for a snack to go with your egg cream, what could you get?

“Old timers will oftentimes ask for a pretzel rod with their egg cream,” said Giasullo, who dropped a rod into a chocolate egg cream that she prepared forme on a muggy Friday morning. “It’s the perfect combo of sweet and salty.”

“It’s pretty classic,” Freeman added. “If you get a chocolate, you have to go with a nice sour cream cake donut or a vanilla-frosted sprinkle donut,” Demetri recommended while working on a busy Monday afternoon. “Or if you get vanilla, which a lot of people order here, a chocolate cake donut or a strawberryfrosted sprinkle donut goes great.”

Peter Pan Donut and Pastry, 727 Manhattan Ave, (718) 389-3676

Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Fountain, 513 Henry Street, (718) 522-6260

Gia Giasullo and Peter Freeman, the sibling co-founders of Brooklyn Farmacy

Cutting Through the Pandemic: The Resilience of Ken Marcelle and Mat Blak

On a quiet July afternoon on Verona Street, near the corner of Van Brunt, Ken Marcelle sweeps hair from the floor before his next appointment. The incoming client is Keaton Tips, formally a resident of Red Hook.

A 34-year-old animator and motion designer, Tips moved from Dikeman Street to an apartment in Ridgewood, Queens, in 2020. That year, many of the millennials and gen-xers that made up Marcelle’s base clientele departed New York City for much farther-away places. Some eventually came back, others did not.

Although it’s a bit of a commute, Tips treks to his old neighborhood every month for a haircut at Ken’s hybrid hair studio, floral design studio and art gallery, Mat Blak.

The studio-cum-gallery is as dynamic as Marcelle’s many specialties. When Tips walks in, there is music playing; a funky yet soothing and atmospheric blend of jazz, hip-hop, and house. The two old friends smile and hug each other, and Tips sits down after his hour-long commute to spend about the same amount of time in Marcelle’s chair.

An hour might seem like a long time to spend with a barber. But Marcelle isn’t just any barber–or stylist. “I tried a few ‘upscale’ boutique salons and such around Bushwick when I moved to the Ridgewood area,” Tips says. “It’s always a letdown. It’s worth it to travel an hour just to know I’ll get a great cut.”

Mat Blak has depended on loyal clients for their repeat business and referrals, especially in the aftermath of the pandemic. The shutdowns hit Marcelle’s business hard as many of his clients left the city for good, or sought out a cheaper cut to save money. But clients like Tips have stuck with him. “We need one another,” Marcelle says, of his clients. “I need people just as much as they need me. I try to offer myself as much as I can. We would like to offer you an experience. Through conversation, through music, through a great look.”

During the pandemic, Marcelle, who

interview by Matt Graber

is 44 and originally from Pittsburgh, quarantined for 98 days in his Bed-Stuy apartment. During this time, he suffered from isolation, losing his customers, his income, and wrestling with anxiety and depression. But he also found in the isolation and distance from others a certain clarity of mind that has helped him not just recover from the pandemic, but reinvent himself in various ways. In the new studio location, which he opened last year after successful fundraising on Kickstarter, Marcelle sets the ambiance with music, and just an all around cool, contemplative, fun vibe. This summer, he began DJing under the name “DJ Rashad X.” He is already a regular in at least one Red Hook spot. Marcelle is also a floral designer and curator, using his space to showcase the work of local artists, and create floral arrangements. Below is more from our July conversation with Marcelle. We talked about his experience with the pandemic, its effect on his business, how it changed him, and how he has adapted and continued to reinvent himself in this ever-changing world.

Marcelle is now accepting new clients, so visit his website at matblak.com to schedule an appointment! And check him out on instagram @matblaknewyork. You can also check out his “Jazz Snob” playlists on Spotify.

Ken, we all had our own unique experiences with the pandemic, and I know that as a small business owner, you had a particularly difficult time. How are you doing now, and how have you adjusted to life and work in the aftermath of the pandemic?

Honestly? I’m still in recovery. It’s like, you go through something traumatic and you’re basically turned into an inmate of sorts, within your house, and you’re just about trying to keep sane and keep alive. I was in quarantine for 98 days, that’s how long I had to close my shop at the time. And then when you come back, you’re a new person, you’re a different person. 98 days in quarantine is a lot. Tell me more about what that experience was like.

It was really tough to put it mildly, but I also had a transformation during quarantine. Before the pandemic I was so hard on myself, always giving myself a hard time, like I was lacking some kind of discipline. I had a drill sergeant in my head yelling ‘Get up, do this, do that, go, go, go!’ But during quarantine, I was able to give myself a break and let it go.

The effects of the lockdown and the isolation were so overwhelming for many people, but there were also ways in which it seemed to give us a different perspective, in a way that made us more determined, or something like that. Was that the case for you?

It was like an unlocking for me, almost like cleaning out a closet and putting back the clothes that you want to keep, and discarding the things that didn’t work for me anymore. When I came back to work, I felt like someone more forward-thinking, and more like someone that could put thoughts into action without fear. So I did a fundraiser after observing a few other friends who had successful fundraisers. And in my head, the voice went from “What if I did this?” to “Let’s do this.”

In 2021, while many businesses were going under and struggling to survive, you decided to open a new location and use Kickstarter to get support. Can you tell us more about that experience, and what advice do you have for someone thinking of using a crowdfunding platform to support a venture?

One thing I learned is that if you want to do something, you need to not be afraid to ask for help. You’re going to need people to help you. You’re going to need a team. And most importantly, you have to start. If you have a vision, don’t hold it in. Write it down, talk about it. Then you can manifest it through action. I had so much support from people, and you need that. We need each other. That’s something that I haven’t forgotten.

You’ve been DJ-ing and you always have music playing in your studio. What does the music mean to you as far as creating an atmosphere at Mat Blak?

It’s about creating a place of dreams. I want my clients to relax, sometimes even nod off, then wake up with an idea or a

different perspective on a problem they may have been dealing with when they came into the studio. It’s about creating a space for imagination, where a client is getting their haircut, talking about things, ideas, and inspirations. There is some type of transformation that takes place that comes along with being groomed, being pampered, being taken care of. It’s like cleaning your space, a cut, a massage, a facial. You feel better. What have you learned about people from cutting hair?

That we have much more in common than our pursuit of money. I cry with people in the shop, I counsel people, I receive counsel, and it feels a little strange for them to then give me money, but I do it with confidence. I remind myself that this is worth it. I’m worth it, you’re worth it, it’s worth it.

Where did the name and concept come from for DJ Rashad X?

It’s an ode to yesteryear. When I was a kid my nickname was Rah-Rah and my grandparents used to watch me sing and perform for them. And that’s when I was honing my ear for music, my tastes. They listened to a lot of jazz.

You mentioned that recovery is still a theme for you as you navigate life and business after the pandemic. Has your business fully recovered in terms of volume of clients, or are you still working on rebuilding your client base?

It’s been really great to be able to keep many of my clients, but there are definitely still many people who have not come back and I would love to have more clients to help close that gap. What are your hopes for this year, and next year with Mat Blak? What do you have going on that you’d like people to know about?

I would love to continue to offer my space for more community interaction, offer my space for artists, offer my space for other creatives who just need a wall, need a corner. To continue interaction and to grow interaction in the neighborhood. I want people to know that I haven’t given up, and that they shouldn’t either, and that I’m still here. Come see me!

Mat Blak is located at 95 Verona Street, between Van Brunt and Richards Street. Ken Marcelle photo by Troy Mattison

The Hollywood Strikes are About the Future: Of Culture, of Work, of America

Studs Terkel’s 1974 book Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do is a lot of things: a landmark oral history, a monument to conversation, a snapshot of labor across classes and collars at a particular unsettled moment in American history. It’s also a testament to how little things change.

Working captures the experiences of more than 100 working people from seemingly all fields: farming and manufacturing, sports and the arts, the trades and the vocations, waitresses and bureaucrats, organizers and meter readers. And on and on. It’s a staggering slice of American culture, and a unique prism through which to view it.

When Terkel stepped back to see what these Americans revealed about work in America — indeed, about America — he found some commonalities. People wanted their work to mean something more than a paycheck, and they wanted to mean something through their work. “In all instances, there is felt more than a slight ache,” Terkel writes in his introduction. “In all instances, there dangles the impertinent question: Ought not there be an increment, earned though not yet received, from one’s daily work — an acknowledgement of man’s being?”

A lot of his opening statement will sound — and feel — familiar to anyone who works for a living, especially if that means sacrificing aspirations and compromising on principles to ensure you have health insurance or, more importantly, a roof over your head. But as Working makes plain, and our lived experience verifies, working for survival increasingly means ever deeper sacrifices, compromises, and debasement just to prove — over the ever-expanding chasm of wealth and opportunity that exists between the rank and file and management — that you’re worthy of the job. (The weaponization of “work ethic” also comes in for harsh treatment from Terkel and his people.)

But there’s one piece of Terkel’s introduction that screams off the page.

“Perhaps it is this specter that most haunts working men and women: the planned obsolescence of people is of a piece with the planned obsolescence of the things they make. Or see,” Terkel writes. “It is perhaps this fear of no longer being needed in a world of needless things that most clearly spells out the unnaturalness, the surreality of much

by Dante A. Ciampaglia

that is called work today.”

This specter is the axis upon which the conversation around artificial intelligence turns — the axis which Silicon Valley and corporate America barons, ultimate peddlers of needless things, don’t want people to dwell on. (Just go back to creating weird images and text with DALL-E and ChatGPT. It will help you become a “prompt engineer” when you’re downsized out of a career.) And it’s central to the twin strikes roiling — and, hopefully, upending forever — Hollywood.

Members of the Writers Guild of America went on strike on May 2. The Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) joined them on July 14. It was the first time both unions struck at the same time since 1960. (In one of history’s great ironies, Ronald Reagan was SAG president at the time.) A central issue then was residuals — what creatives get paid after the initial run of a film or TV episode. Television gave movies an afterlife that didn’t previously exist, which meant executives cashing in endlessly on work they only had to paid for once. That strike lasted 148 days and, in part, created a residuals system that allowed actors — not superstar celebrities, but working stiff who are bit players or background fillers — to have a career. Cut to 63 years later, and residuals are still an issue thanks to streaming services like Netflix and Max (née HBO Max) refusing to share data with anyone involved with a film or show it creates. Why? Because, they claim, it will harm its primary intellectual property: blackbox algorithms that serve up content with increasing specificity to its subscribers. They pay handsomely up front, but after that comes barely a trickle of residual checks. And anyone who thinks they’re owed something for propping up this new, and frankly unsustainable, business model, executives say, are just immature babies.

“There’s a level of expectation that they have is just not realistic,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said at the outset of the SAG strike. “And they are adding to the set of the challenges that this business is already facing that is, quite frankly, very disruptive.” Try cutting into his $15 million salary, which he got in 2022, and see how fast that tune changes.

Where things get truly dire is with the introduction of AI. At the beginning of the SAG strike, chief negotiator

Duncan Crabtree-Ireland revealed a dystopic sticking point in negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP): “They proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get one day’s pay, and their companies should own that scan, their image, their likeness and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity on any project they want, with no consent and no compensation.” For its part, the AMPTP said sure they’d scan people’s faces but, trust them, they’ll only use the scans for that specific production. And there emerges Terkel’s specter. “Why should I care about what a rich actor gets paid?” It’s the question looming over these strikes. But putting aside that this is less about whether some celebrity gets paid more and all about whether a working actor gets paid anything, it’s also about whether someone will be able to simply work. When we hear about AI, things tend to fall back to a debate over whether it will take our jobs. I confess to being optimistic in the long term — probably naively, probably wrongly. But what the SAG/WGA strikes confirm are realities labor has always struggled against. Any chance management has to undercut workers — whether it’s using AI to write a script or casting digital actors or automating an assembly line — it’ll take it. And any chance management has to completely replace human beings with technology, it’ll take that, too. It doesn’t even have to be whiz-bang fancy like AI. In Barbara Kopple’s masterful 1976 documentary Harlan County, USA, about a brutal coal miners strike in rural Kentucky, an old timer recalls the mine operators demanding he take care with one of the mules on the site. If it dies, he remembers the boss saying, “we have to buy another mule. We can always hire another man.” Later in the film, one-time United Mine Workers of America president John L. Lewis rails against management “who desires to make money from your misery.”

And so we come to the point, as Terkel was fond of saying. Automation, AI, robots — whatever technology greets us will always be seized upon to grease the wheels of the “planned obsolescence of people.” That could be coal mines or steel mills or auto plants or doctors’ offices or white-collar cubicle farms. (You

hear lots of stories in this mode growing up in a union steelworker household.) Hollywood is an unexpected venue for the first skirmish in this fight. But centered as it is on a very showy bit of innovation, why not work it out on the streets of the world’s culture factory? Those who control what we see and where we see it will try convincing us that these are inane whiny tantrums of the “elite.” Don’t buy it. Don’t believe it. This fight is happening around movies and TV today, but it’s headed for everyone else soon. “An assembly line is a line is a line,” as Terkel writes. And it’s a fight worth having — not only for the inhumane, indefensible gulf between what management takes and what the rank-and-file makes but because the future of work is at stake: for us, our children, their children, and our nation. After all, if media moguls are willing to unhesitatingly replace actors with AI-generated avatars, what chance do any of us stand when the tech industry shows up at our boss’ office with promises of eliminating pesky human inefficiencies?

“When employers make Wall Street and greed their priority and they forget about the essential contributors that make the machine run, we have a problem,” SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher said in announcing the strike. “At some point the jig is up. You cannot keep being dwindled and marginalized and disrespected and dishonored. We are labor, and we stand tall. And we demand respect. And to be honored for our contribution. You share the wealth because you cannot exist without us.”

The WGA/SAG strikes are about the struggle for a fair wage and for basic respect — for an acknowledgement of one’s being. And it isn’t just the demand of Hollywood writers and actors. It’s the demand of everyone — blue collar, white collar, no collar — who wonders why they’re working harder and longer than ever yet rubbing pennies together simply to exist while executives hoard all the gains and who will junk you without thought if it meant a bigger cut for them.

We all have a stake in the outcome of what’s happening in Hollywood. Our planned obsolescence is imminent if those in power have anything to say about it. They’re imagining — and building — a world where they can exist without us.

Photo credit: UFCW770/flickr.

Books for the beachFrom Murakami to Ferrante

by Kelsey Sobel

Theterms “summer reading” “beach reads” or even “guilty pleasures” are frequently tossed around in July and August. These terms conjure different images and ideas - the dreaded mandatory summer reading for reluctant students, the splashy / trashy cover of a romance with sand stuck in the pages or maybe the various media platforms where you can find lists such as this.

For me, summer reading evokes leisure time, an hour or maybe even two of uninterrupted reading. Leisure time means you can read at a faster pace; immerse yourself completely in a book. You want a book where you don’t have to work too hard.

So, what is the ideal “beach read?” I believe the perfect formula is a mix of: Literary without being too taxing on the mind.

Absorbing and accessible to a wide audience.

Below are my recommended summer reads - books that will draw you in without demanding that you do too much work, books that you can’t wait to finish. And hey, if you’re reading anything in 2023, you’re doing well.

My Struggle

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

The Neapolitan Quartet

by Elena Ferrante

A fun way to approach summer reading is to try a series. I read all four of these books in close succession since I was so compelled by the plot and drawn to the complexity of the novels, especially the vivid portrayal of a friendship over the course of sixty years. If you missed these books back when they came out in 2011, they are highly worth the time investment. Although possibly more attractive to a female reader, the books do closely examine post war Naples, Italy, and cover political upheaval, murder, disappearances, martial strain, etc. The HBO adaptation also received excellent reviews if you’re looking for summer TV.

These fascinatingly detailed and bulky books, totaling six in all, first came out in English in 2012 and were hailed as a literary sensation around the world. When I explained the basic premise of the series, my husband asked, agog, “Why would you ever want to read about some guy’s life?” and this series is truly that - a highly nuanced and sometimes shockingly mundane description of Norwegian writer  Karl Ove Knausgaard’s daily life, spanning from boyhood to fatherhood. However, the high quality of the writing and living within Knausgaard’s inner world is an interesting and rich place to be. This series is certainly not for everyone, nor do you need to read all six. I certainly found something simultaneously addictive and moving within the pages. I highly recommend starting with book one and seeing how you fare.

The Witch Elm by Tana French

If you’re not already a fan of the Irish murder mystery writer, Tana French, you should be. Her most recent novel, although dense, (clocking in at 528 pages) manages to straddle the fine line between literary fiction and plain mystery. Over the years French has written seven books, all set in Ireland. You can’t go wrong with any of her novels

- a personal favorite is her first, In the Woods, but The Witch Elm skillfully combines a modern family drama with the unfolding mystery of a skeleton found in the garden and includes a fair bit of Irish colloquialisms like “gaff” to keep you entertained.

A Woman In the Polar Night by Christine Ritter

This aptly named and wildly underrated book by Austrian writer Christine Ritter is a detailed travelog turned novel of a year spent on the remote Norwegian island of Svalbard in 1933. Ritter deftly captures the psychological strain and wonder of living in a one room cabin with her husband - while also braving several weeks alone without any sunlight or human companionship while he hunts. Her affection for

the haunting beauty of the landscape and the terrifying cold is tangible to readers and provides a bright juxtaposition to the menaces of modern society. If you’re looking to “beat the heat” this slim novel will transport you to a land where you’re happy to be eating dried seal meat.

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

If you’ve never read a Murakami novel, summer is the time. After reading The Wind Up Bird Chronicle a few years ago, I average at least one Murakami per year. The mystical, magical, surreal worlds he creates draw you deep into the novels, eagerly turning the pages - as long as you’re comfortable with generally inexplicable oddities such as manipulations of time and sexual perversions. Norwegian Wood, written in 1987, to critical acclaim in Japan, contains a simpler plot than later novels, as well as far fewer pages than his other books. A true love story with the right level of mystery, the book also features some characteristically steamy sex scenes as well as a good dose of tragedy. If you’re ok with crying on the subway or at the beach, try Norwegian Wood

Sonic revival. Concert performances by Sonic Youth were glorious things— transcendent, intoxicating, very nearly overwhelming. Sound systems and synapses couldn't always handle them but the energy transference was reliably powerful. The band played what is commonly referred to as its last show on the Williamsburg Waterfront in Brooklyn on August 12, 2011. They actually went on to play already scheduled festivals in South America which, by at least some accounts, lacked the luster of their usual shows. But the Williamsburg date was their New York goodbye, and for a band that was conceived in and always celebrated the city, it’s maybe OK if the lore outweighs actual history.

I saw them many times, going back to sometime in the mid ‘80s, but sadly missed their New York farewell. I’m glad, though, to get to experience it a dozen years later with the issue of Live in Brooklyn 2011 (out August 11 on double LP and double CD from Silver Current Records and digitally a week later from Goofin’) and to discover what a proper send-off it was. They start off strong with “Brave Men Run (In My Family)” and “Death Valley ‘69” from 1985’s Bad Moon Rising and continue with “Kotton Krown” (Sister, 1987), “Kill Yr Idols” (from the 1983 EP of the same name) and “Eric’s Trip” (Daydream Nation, 1988). Not to get all “I like your old stuff” but it’s great to hear the band reach back to songs they’d long since dropped from their setlists. They follow that with another surprise, two cuts from 2009’s The Eternal, after which Thurston Moore announces “When we started rehearsing two days ago, we decided to go, like, super deep, so it’s been a while since we played some of these.” And indeed, a couple more from Bad Moon and “Tom Violence” from 1986’s EVOL follow. In all, they play 17 songs, 11 of them from before their 1990 big label breakthrough. The two encores include 1985’s “Flower” and a glorious 9 minutes of “Inhuman” from 1983’s Confusion is Sex. The songs aren't good because they’re old, it’s how much they put into them 20 years after

writing them and how fantastically tight they play them, how in control they are of their mayhem. That’s not entirely due to drummer Steve Shelley, the unsung hero of the band, but he’s a big part of reigning in the running wild guitars. He sounds great and the mix is clear and clean. Other archival Sonic Youth albums have been exciting; this one is essential.

Bush Tetras Live On. With their singles “Too Many Creeps,” “Things That Go Boom in the Night'' and “Can’t Be Funky,” Bush Tetras were a key component to New York’s post-punk, following the dance grooves, incendiary guitar and uneasy lyrics coming out of England. Their scattered discography was pulled together on the 30-track Rhythm and Paranoia in 2021. In a bitter irony, just before the set’s release—and as they were beginning to discuss a new album—founding drummer Dee Pop died unexpectedly. Guitarist Pat Place and singer Cynthia Sley persevered with the able support of Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley, who worked with them in the studio to complete the songs and then produced the album. They Live in My Head (LP, CD and download from Wharf Cat Records out now), is only the third full-length release in their long history. It has a harder edge, some of the tracks even sound a bit rote rock, but there’s enough there of what made them great to make it work. In “Walking Out the Door”—at five and a quarter minutes, the album’s longest track—Sley dishes sardonic attitude over a solid groove before the song dissolves into an oddly catchy, mysterious and slightly dubby second half. Other songs are more straightforward, but Place’s guitar sears throughout. (RB Korbet of the original lineup of King Missile handles bass.) It’s good to kmow that, after more than 40 years, they’re still dancing through urban fear.

Reminiscing in mascara and a bikini. Seventy-one years of age might be a bit outside the statistical norm for a debut album but even so, Sally Potter is anything but a slacker. She started making films at 14, went on to study dance and choreography, was a member of London’s Feminist Improvising Group in the 1970s and worked as a singer and lyricist with Lindsay Cooper (Henry Cow, David Thomas and the Pedestrians), notably on the 1991 album Oh, Moscow. She wrote and directed the 1992 film Orlando, for which she also co-wrote the score, and wrote the score and sang for her 1997 The Tango Lesson. Pink Bikini (self-released for download and streaming services on July 17) is a promising start for a new career. It’s an album looking back at life, at youthful mistakes, but not with regrets. There’s a confidence to the record, and also a bit of weariness, that calls to mind Marianne Faithfull’s mature albums (which is no faint praise, few people who aren’t Tom Waits can claim to have recorded a definitive version of a Tom Waits song). The songs are all Potter’s, with able accompaniment by guitarist Fred Frith (also of Henry Cow back in the Swinging London days) and a largely acoustic band of guitar, double bass, harp and percussion. On the closing track, Potter sings with a hint of pride to her younger self: "So dance, dance, dance girl dance / Hear your body singing / Your eyes wide open / Look, your life is beginning.” It’s like she’s singing through time, imparting wisdom to the woman who lived the life she’s writing about now. One suspects that dancing girl got the message.

#IYKYK Dolly Parton’s 2002 album Halos & Horns included a cover of “Stairway to Heaven” that was a far cry more convincing than her recent reworkings of Heart and Queen but setting that aside, one thing’s for sure: give her an award she doesn’t deserve and she’ll damn well set about earning it.

"Seventy-one years of age might be a bit outside the statistical norm for a debut album but even so, Sally Potter is anything but a slacker."

Quinn on Books

The Way We Wore

Review of “J.C. Leyendecker: American Imagist,” by Laurence S. Cutler and Judy Goffman Cutler Review by Michael

Quinn

What are you wearing as you read this? A shirt from Under Armour? Leggings from Lululemon? Sneakers? Flip-flops?

A hundred years ago, the world was different, and we dressed differently. But it was around this time that advertising first started to get a lock on the nation’s consciousness and influence what people wanted to wear through the power of a well-placed image—a spell we are still under.

We’re so bombarded with images these days that it’s hard to remember (or imagine) a time when a picture was something special and rare. Think of how many you’ve seen today alone, waking up, scrolling through your phone.

This abundance should feel like an embarrassment of riches. Why, then, can it feel so overwhelming?

Around the turn of the 20th century, this craziness began. Magazines popped up like mushrooms after a rainstorm. Their eye-catching covers depicted illustrations of gorgeous people in gorgeous clothes. These images established aspirational ideas about how to look, how to live, and what to value.

One of the most influential tastemakers of the early 20th century was a German American artist named J.C. Leyendecker (1874–1951). His technical skill was masterful, his compositions methodical, and his aesthetic phenomenally romantic. In his work, we see the origins of the “All-American” ideal. The men he painted are athletic but elegantly dressed, with thick necks, chiseled jaws, and gleaming, perfectly parted hair. In off-the-shoulder furs and tight taffeta gowns, his women are long-necked, slender creatures with springy curls and downcast eyes. The work is very “Great Gatsby,” and there is some speculation that Leyendecker, who knew author F. Scott Fitzgerald, might have inspired him with his own rags-toriches mysterious past.

Leyendecker came from nothing and rose to the top of the heap. He was a branding pioneer (creating the “Arrow Collar Man,” a hunky yet refined “man’s man” sex symbol designed to sell shirts) and, through the 322 covers he created for the Saturday Evening Post, the prototypical influencer. It’s because of Leyendecker that we associate New Year’s with a baby, Mother’s Day with flowers, and the Fourth of July with firecrackers. He was worshipped by Norman

Rockwell (whose fame eclipsed his), yet unlike Rockwell, he worked with live models, not from photographs. And unlike Rockwell, who was something of a media hound, Leyendecker was notoriously private and requested his papers be burned upon his death. Little is widely known about him.

An exhibit at the New-York Historical Society (Central Park West and 77th Street) provides an important clue about why. “Under Cover,” guest-curated by Donald Albrecht with coordination by Rebecca Klassen, is a small and powerful show of Leyendecker’s paintings. In one, we see an attractive woman surrounded by men. She leans over a ship’s railing to catch the eye of one of them—who’s slyly looking at another man. Today’s audience will recognize things in these paintings that the intended audience did not: homoerotic overtones.

Leyendecker’s most prominent model and muse, Charles Beach (1881–1954), was his life partner of nearly 50 years. The men were gay at a time when that wasn’t an allowable public identity. This is why Leyendecker kept a low profile—and perhaps the reason his name isn’t so well-known today.

“Under Cover” is a gem of a show that runs through August 13. The museum’s bookstore was out of copies of a related book, “J.C. Leyendecker: American Imagist,” by Laurence S. Cutler and Judy Goffman Cutler, but it’s worth getting a copy from your local bookstore. Published in 2008, this oversized hardcover is a delight for the senses. The authors, founders of the National Museum of American Illustration in Newport, Rhode Island, pull from a collection of over 1,300 images from the “Golden Age of American Illustration” (1895–1945) to help us understand how Leyendecker’s work continues to influence and inspire us today.

We learn more about Leyendecker’s background through the Cutlers’ meticulous research. Born in Germany, one of four children, he went by Joe. The J.C. allegedly stood for “Jesus Christ”—perhaps a way for the family with Sephardic Jew ancestry to throw off the wolves before the family emigrated

(continued on back page)

"The men he painted are athletic but elegantly dressed, with thick necks, chiseled jaws, and gleaming, perfectly parted hair."

Jazz by Grella

Voices From The Past

by George Grella

Archival recordings are tricky to think about critically, in no small part because the contents of any artists archives are always interesting and desirable to fans, and that fan enthusiasm makes criticism irrelevant for most of the people who would even consider buying them. And reader, I am one of those fans—as one example, Miles Davis’ album In a Silent Way is substantially superior to The Complete In a Silent Way Sessions, but I’m a Miles fanatic and so will sift through the rehearsal tracks, alternate takes, unreleased material, any and all of that to obtain even a crumb of insight into the great master’s thinking. My fellow fanatic, I see you. There’s been a good handful of notable archival (re)issues this summer, all of which will appeal to fans, and all of which should be considered critically because the stature of the artists—and the consumer’s budget—demand it. The most prominent of these are Evenings at the Village Gate (Impulse!), a previously unreleased live set from John Coltrane’s quintet with Eric Dolphy, and Changes, a seven-CD box that collects the albums Charles Mingus made on Atlantic during the 1970s, his final recording period before his 1979 death from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

pedal tones; Dolphy’s tangential, extended harmonic concept was the kind of complement that reinforced each artists’ greatness.

The tape was made by engineer Rich Alderson, who apparently recorded it as a test of the club’s new sound system, and then ended up in the archives of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, before its recent rediscovery. As an accidental album it has that exciting edge of hearing the musicians playing live, without thinking about making a recording (the Vanguard sessions were planned), and it also has an awkward—though clear—mix, with Elvin Jones’ drums directly in front and Dolphy and Coltrane at various distant points in the background.

The playing is as fine as one would expect, although Coltrane defers to Dolphy, who really dominates here. Coltrane doesn’t shrink away and is strong, he just gives Dolphy the majority of space and time. What makes this a little bit more than a supplement to the Vanguard recordings are two details, one being they play the standard “When Lights Are Low,” which is unexpected and sounds like they’re using it to take a little breather, and the 22+ minutes of “Africa,” the only nonstudio recording of the piece. Coltrane fans will want all this—they should— but the more casual listeners won’t need to add it.

That was one of the four or five greatest groups in the history of the music, with an extraordinary range of musical

expresses both swing and a glowing humanity. Recorded in 1959, this sounds as current as anything newly released, and the expanded edition has improved sound, puts the tracks in original sequence, and includes a whole second CD of alternate and bonus material. One of the great jazz albums is now even better.

The lesser-known (or at least lesserpromoted) albums are Mosaic Records’ latest limited-edition set, The Complete Sonny Clark Blue Note Sessions, and Jazz in Silhouette—Expanded Version, by Sun Ra and his Arkestra (Cosmic Myth). What will probably surprise both fans and casual listeners is that the first two releases are less than essential—though any and all fans will be pleased—while the latter two are not just superb but will expand most listeners knowledge and understanding of these artists, which is the highest praise that I can give to archival recordings.

Evenings at the Village Gate comes from the same era, and has the same ensemble, as Coltrane’s Village Vanguard live recordings (ideally The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings on Impulse!, an essential jazz document), but this set comes from August of 1961, while the Vanguard music was recorded the first week of November that same year. This was a vital transitional year for Coltrane who was moving deeply into dense, drone-like playing over

That’s even truer for Changes, which is a must for fans (raising my hand) of one of the greatest American composers and musicians, but not something anyone else will want, or perhaps even enjoy. This was Mingus’ second stint with Atlantic, where he made such fantastic albums as Pithecanthropus Erectus, Blues and Roots, and Oh Yeah! in the ‘50s and ‘60s. For these, Mingus had a new core band; right-hand man drummer Dannie Richmond was there, with younger musicians pianist Don Pullen, tenor saxophonist George Adams, and trumpeter Jack Walrath.

That was a good band! Pullen and Adams were volcanic improvisers who went on to be important artists, but

there’s nothing that could recreate Mingus’ mid-‘60s group, with Dolphy, trumpeter Johnny Coles, tenor player Clifford Jordan, and pianist Jaki Byard.

personality and with the leader himself willing and able to change direction in a nanosecond. These Atlantic albums just don’t have that same inventiveness or outrageousness, and Mingus’ himself is mellow, seeming content. And that’s how a lot of this music sounds, content, satisfied with where it is and, except for when Pullen starts bashing the keys or Adams screams through the horn, glad to stay that way. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s not compelling. There are two exceptions, good and bad: the good is Cumbia and Jazz Fusion, originally meant as a film score but an intriguing record on its own, with surprises in the details; the bad is Three or Four Shades of Blues which has Mingus revisiting great material like “Goodbye Porkpie Hat” at Atlantic’s bequest. The label shoved guitarist Larry Coryell (and others) into the session, and it is one of the worst mismatches in music history, with Coryell’s Mahavishnu-John-McLaughlin-like shredding shitting all over the brilliance and subtleties of Mingus’ composing. The new edition of Jazz in Silhouette is an easy recommendation. This was and remains one of the cornerstone Sun Ra albums, and with this and the collected Singles (comprehensively reissued by Strut) one would have a complete introduction to what Ra was all about. Jazz in Silhouette has originals and standards like “‘Round Midnight” and “I Could Have Danced All Night,” and in style embraces straight big band charts, mystical cosmology, and avantgarde excursions with equal weight and a warm, transparent charm. To Ra, music was just music, nothing was weird (that was for squares), and everything

Last but not least is the Clark collection. He was a mainstay house pianist for Blue Note during the hard bop era and made nine albums for the label, only five of which were released during his short lifetime (he died in 1963 at age 31 of a heroin overdose). He’s often remembered for the great, slinky, funky themes he composed, like “Cool Struttin’” and “News for Lulu,” the last a major inspiration to John Zorn. Heard piecemeal on his own albums or as a sideman, he always sounds solid but not outstanding. Listen through this set and his playing comes through—he was hard swinging, bluesy, and also elegant and subtle, so he really shines through extended exposure. The Blue Note albums are bookended by Dial “S” for Sonny (1957) and Leapin’ and Lopin (1962); the former is solid but formulaic, the latter has good material but the frontline of trumpeter Tommy Turrentine and tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse doesn’t mesh. But in between is a run of terrific albums that are exemplars of the Blue Note sound. There’s a set of tunes recorded for 45 rpm singles with bassist Jymie Merrit and drummer Wes Landers, and they are exquisite; “Gee Baby Ain’t I Good to You” and “I’m Just a Lucky So-And-So” are gorgeously plainspoken and bluesy. The Blues in the Night trio date, with Paul Chambers on bass, is also terrific, and Sonny Clark Trio (Philly Joe Jones is the drummer) is another great piano trio album. Cool Struttin’ has long been a favorite for non-jazz listeners because of the classic album cover, the music is even better, strong and elegant, and the My Conception album, with trumpeter Donald Byrd and tenor man Hank Mobley, is simply one of the finest hard bop albums ever produced. For giving the listener the chance to hear how smart, deep, and hip Clark was, this set is a major testament and a demonstration of how important and enjoyable an archival release can be.

"I’m a Miles fanatic and so will sift through the rehearsal tracks, alternate takes, unreleased material, any and all of that to obtain even a crumb of insight into the great master’s thinking."

Marie's Craft Corner

Turn a cardboard drink carrier into a summertime game!

by Marie Hueston

Next time you’re picking up iced coffees or iced teas for a group of friends this summer, save the cardboard carrier to create your own portable tossing game! The steps are simple and you can play the game anywhere you go. Follow the directions below to get started.

QUINN ON BOOKS

(continued from page 18)

to Chicago. Joe was closest to youngest brother Franz (known as Frank), who was also gay and phenomenally talented but couldn’t stomach the artistic compromises commercial work demanded: “I despise myself for doing them, although I HAVE to do them,” he later complained to a sympathetic model. A drug addiction later derailed Frank’s career, eventually cutting his life short.

Joe apprenticed at an engraving house as a teenager and took night classes in art. He and Frank saved up to study in Paris with Alphonse Mucha, founder of the art nouveau movement. ToulouseLautrec’s posters of can-can girls were

Gather your materials. In addition to a drink carrier, you’ll need paint in a few colors of your choice, wide and thin paintbrushes, and small items to toss as part of your game. You might use small rocks you find in the park or on the beach, pinecones or coins to name a few possibilities.

all the rage then, seeding an idea in Joe about the power of commercial art. The Cutlers write that he “believed his greatest impact as an artist was creating images easily reproduced, immediately recognized, and broadly distributed.”

The brothers moved to New York, and their careers took off. Beach showed up at their door one day, looking to model. Standing 6’2” with huge shoulders, massive biceps, and a tiny waist, he stood in marked contrast to the sallow and serious-looking Joe (the Cutlers call him “physically unimpressive”), who recognized Beach as his ideal and spent years documenting his magnificent physique. Beach, in turn, helped manage Leyendecker’s studio and career and kept sycophants at bay. (Rockwell resented the men’s closeness, calling Beach “a real parasite—like some huge, white, cold

Paint each section in your carrier. Use a wide paintbrush to add color to each of the four drink receptacles, as well as the center portion of your carrier. You can use any colors that you like. I chose red, yellow and blue. To avoid smudges, let each color dry completely before starting a new section.

you can choose any numbers you wish. Note: You can also use a wide marker to write the numbers instead of painting them.

Start playing! Take this portable game to the beach, to the park or even out onto the sidewalk and start tossing. Have fun!

Add numbers. Use a thin brush and black paint to make numbers in each section to determine the score for landing there. I painted 5 and 10 on the sides and 25 in the center of the game shown here, but in your game

insect clinging to Joe’s back.”)

The perspective of Leyendecker’s paintings is sometimes from below, so the heads look small and the hands look huge, emphasizing brawn over brains. (Flip through the book, and you will agree: there is no better painter of hands.)

Leyendecker allegedly smeared his models with oil to capture the glean off their well-defined muscles and chiseled cheekbones, but watch what happens when he wants your eye to pay attention to the clothes in an ad. No matter how gorgeous the model is, your eye goes right to the clothing. Everything is illuminated to magnificent effect.

Speaking of clothes, the New-York Historic Society sells a few articles inspired by the show in its shop. You can find them online too. While some of the selection (snazzy hats and bowties) befit

a dandy, the most prominently displayed shirt is undoubtedly the most popular and says the most about how we dress now. It features two of Leyendecker’s beautiful, beautifully dressed men from a more beautiful time… on an oversized orange tank top.